Compuserve's censorship of Usenet newsgroups

By now you've heard that Compuserve has blocked its 4 million subscribers
worldwide from directly accessing 251 Usenet newsgroups said to contain
sexually explicit material. (I've posted a
complete list of the newsgroups on
the TBTF archive.) Compuserve says it took this action at the direct request
of German authorities, and had no role in choosing which newsgroups were
blocked. Compuserve could not block access to the newsgroups only for a
geographically defined subset of its subscribers and so chose to block
them for all.

Germany, unlike the USA, does not mandate a separation between church and
state, and both the Lutheran and the Catholic churches can and do directly
impact political life there. The demand that Compuserve block access to the
newsgroups originated in the office of a public prosecutor in Bavaria. An
American who lives in Bavaria compared it to Texas in the USA, a stronghold
of conservative Catholic culture. The Bavarian authorities apparently were
acting on a law against the corruption of minors, which is posted in all
taverns and other public places in the state.

There is good evidence that the targeted newsgroups were selected from a
larger list of newsgroups based on their names, not on an actual
examination of their content. Of the newsgroups banned, all but three have one of
the words "sex" (165), "erotic" (68), or "gay" (18) in their names. The
remaining three have names containing "lesbian," "lolita," and "nude." Among
the banned newsgroups are three from the Clarinet News Service, whose
content consists entirely of copyrighted newswire stories. A spokesman for
Clarinet says that Compuserve is not a subscriber -- that is, the Clarinet
groups are not even available to Compuserve members.

One of the most active gay discussion groups, alt.motss, was not banned,
probably because the German authorities did not know that motss means
"members of the same sex." Posters to the banned groups are being
encouraged to cross-post to other groups not on the list such as alt.motss.

Compuserve members have many alternate ways to get to the banned newsgroups,
including using the Compuserve network to reach a Usenet host unaffiliated
with Compuserve. Here is how Duncan Frissell <frissell at panix dot com> did it:

> So I'd heard that CompuServe had banned access to all those naughty
> newsgroups including my favorite alt.binaries.erotic.senior-citizens.
> Could this be true? I fired up my CompuServe Internet Dialer (the PPP
> software packaged with WinCim) and logged on to the nets. Sure enough.
> The popular binaries groups were missing from news.compuserve.com. But
> not to be deterred...
>
> I grabbed a copy of the Free Agent newsreader:
>
> <http://www2.interpath.net/forte/agent/freagent.htm>
> <ftp.forteinc.com/pub/free_agent/fagent10.zip>
>
> I grabbed the latest list of open NNTP Servers from:
>
> <http://dana.ucc.nau.edu/~jwa/open-sites.html>
>
> I pointed my copy of Free Agent at CPCNET's open news server
> (198.70.185.5) and grabbed a list of groups and sure enough, there
> were the seasoned citizens in all their glory. And I was checking
> out those binaries via CompuServe.
>
> Don't tell the Bavarians.

As John Gilmore has said, "The Net views censorship as damage and routes
around it."

The hue and cry is loud around the world over this locally mandated act of
global censorship. Some have speculated that this demonstration of the danger
of ill-defined "indecency" laws might influence the debate over the US
telecommunications bill, but personally I doubt that it will.

Essential tools

BareBones Guide to HTML: Once you have learned HTML and are using it every
day you will want Kevin Werbach's <barebones at werbach dot com> guide. It is a
concise and complete outline of HTML syntax, and it shows the level of the
HTML standard (or Netscape defacto standard) in which each HTML command is
included. The BareBones Guide is available as plain text, HTML, or
formatted as a table. The table version is handiest for consulting online
(assuming your browser supports tables). Some of the versions of the guide have
been translated into 7 languages other then English.

Introduction to security on the Net: For some time I have been meaning to
write a primer covering cryptography and its uses in Net commerce: email
encryption, digital signatures, ecash, non-repudiable transactions, etc.
I have finally decided that I cannot improve on the introduction to
security topics published in NetSurfer Focus last October. It contains copious
links to source material and further information on security, privacy,
anonymity, steganography, etc. You'll also learn about squeamish ossifrages.
<http://www.netsurf.com/nsf/v01/03/nsf.01.03.html>

Web server data: Paul E. Hoffman <wwwservers at proper dot com> maintains a popular
resource (it was visited 13,000 times in November) comparing 42 servers,
both freeware and payware, feature by feature in depth. It is invaluable
for anyone trying to decide which server will best meet their needs.
Hoffman has also performed the best profile I've seen of the servers in use
today. He probed a random sample of 2,000 servers culled from more than
23,000 obtained from Yahoo. The results are surprising, and not promising
for those companies whose fortunes are tied too closely to the selling of
Web servers. Over 78% of the servers in use in August 1995 were freeware.
The top 5 servers accounted for 91% of the market: NCSA 54%, CERN 17%,
Netscape 8%, Apache 7%, and WebSTAR/MacHTTP 5%.

Followup: Intuit's official statement on Social Security numbers

Intuit's
official response to customer concerns about
the the use of SSNs was
posted to the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.ms-windows.apps.financial and to AOL
and Compuserve; I've put a plain-text copy in the TBTF archive.

>>From The Weekly Recap (1995-12-25):

> CyberCash Inc. has filed a registration statement with the SEC for
> an initial public offering of 2 million shares of common stock with
> an estimated price range of $15-17 per share, after giving effect
> to a 1-for-2 reverse stock split. The offering is being managed by
> an underwriting group led by Hambrecht & Quist LLC and Robertson,
> Stephens & Co.

DigiCrime

Check out DigiCrime at <http://www.digicrime.com/>, a spoof whose motto is
"Make a crime out of bytes." This site is mostly the invention of Kevin S.
McCurley, the "Thief Scientist." Fifteen other associates are listed
including Ron Rivest (Prime suspect and Key salesman) and YPZBETRQ OHWUDRC
(Manager of cryptographic services). The site offers an "airline rerouting
service," a "wealth redistribution service," and a dozen others, with links
to examples of the crimes for which DigiCrime disclaims responsibility.
DigiCrime is hosted at Southwest Cyberport, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and
its disclaimer reads:

> DigiCrime is a joke!!! While this site might seem real, it is not.
> We are quite sure that there are people with criminal intent in the
> world, but we are not among them. Unless of course satire is outlawed...

TBTF alerts you twice a week to bellwethers in computer and communications
technology, with special attention to commerce on the Internet. See the
archive at <http://www.tbtf.com/>. To subscribe send the
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______________________________________________________
Keith Dawson dawson dot tbtf at gmail dot com dawson@atria.com
Layer of ash separates morning and evening milk.